The IMDb app is an immensely useful piece of software to have installed on a mobile phone. I don't open it often, but once I'm in the mood to hit up the local theater, there's the app, just ready to serve me the latest trailers, movie showtimes, and ticket prices. The beta version of the app has reached 4.2, and it's tidying things up a bit. Options that were crowding up the Action Bar have now been moved into a slide-out navigation menu.

One before, two after.

On devices without dedicated menu buttons, extra settings are still available via the Action Bar. Yet the list is much cleaner now, as you can see by comparing the list of items below to those offered in the first screenshot above.

To get your hands on the beta, you need to join the IMDb Google+ community beforehand. Here's our guide that should get you up in running. After that, you can get the app from the Play Store below.

Born and raised in the rural South, Bertel knows what it's like to live without 4G LTE - or 3G, for that matter. The only things he likes sweeter than his tea are his gadgets, and while few objects burn more than a metal phone on a summer day, he prefers them that way anyway.

Comments

I don't understand why IMDb still has gingerbread elements in it. THIS IS KITKAT, UPDATE DAMMIT

anzensepp1987

It's nostalgia!
I mean, IMDb is owned by Amazon. If you compare the IMDb-App to the Amazon-Apps (especially their awful MP3-App), you have to admit that it's way better/Android/polished.

Dennis Ulijn

If even Google can't keep up with its system updates (blue accents in Kitkat) and their constant redesign of the action bar and navigation drawer (settings in or out of the overflow menu? Navigation drawer over or under the main view?)...

DaKiLund

Would have loved to see chromecast support for trailers and alike, still a nice update though.

remister

Even though I just use this app mainly for trailers, it looks nice. Glad that it can have the hamburger UI that everyone is getting accustomed to.

Floris

They really need to tone down the size of this app. On some pages they put in a webview of a mobile website which just doesn't feel right.

burritoman

It's a pig. Also, they forget this is a mobile app. Loads way too many images, and auto-start videos.

Quote from Adam Powell, an Android developer at Google, from a post he made explaining the new Android design guidelines:

"The next issue to tackle was discoverability. Thanks to work already done by the developer community users were already accustomed to reading a three horizontal line icon at the left side of the action bar as a menu/drawer button. (During user testing one user referred to it as “the hamburger” and the name stuck.) We knew this approach was a sure thing for discoverability but it didn’t quite sit right. Replacing the app icon meant potentially losing a big part of the app’s identity."